Wednesday, December 20, 2006

So, for my MASTER OF THE MEDIUM: GRANT MORRISON book, launching at the New York Comic-Con (see you there?), I called Grant and did a one-hour interview. The meat of the interview will be published in that book, but as the conversation drew to a close, I talked to him about a few things that aren't relevant to the contents of the book.

Here you have it--the exclusive outtakes from the exclusive Grant Morrison interview conducted, I don't know, a week ago last Sunday, I think:

Me: Besides the work I cover in the book, what stuff do you think is the most fertile for this type of in-depth analysis?

Grant: Whatever. I’ll leave it to you [laughter]. It kind of breaks into distinct phases for me. The stuff we’ve been talking about in this book was done when I’d been living with the same girl for nine years. I was really straightedge, I was, like I say, a boy in a band. But I was a really weird boy [laughter]. I was a really weird fucking mod, straightedge--didn’t take part in drugs, anything, you know? And then I got to 32 and just ran away from it after Doom Patrol. Went out there in the world and did all these things I’d never done before, so out of that period you see things like Flex Mentallo and The Invisibles, which are a lot more autobiographical and a lot more psychedelic. Because, at the time, that’s how things were going.

Me: What was after that? Do you think the JLA stuff was a distinct phase?

Grant: No, JLA was done...the whole psychedelic period laster for all of the 90s, basically. All those JLAs were written on drugs [laughter]. You can see the crossover with themes from The Invisibles. So that was the period--because it was a real psychedelic period--it was my Sgt. Pepper time, you know? That kind of stuff fascinated me, because it does seem to be at the center of which a lot of the other stuff revolves around. The Invisibles and Flex Mentallo. Then from 2000 on, there’s things, the Marvel stuff like New X-Men, and the Filth, which were really a different type of head. That’s me trying to deal with a really different world--a much harsher, unpleasant world after 9/11.

In any of these things there’s a lot of interest and underlying stuff, but I’m sure most people would be interested about The Invisibles and Flex. It was a kind of day-glow period.

Me: It really seems like you hit the mainstream once you started doing The Invisibles. That was the thing that impacted the widest amount of people.

Grant: Well, that’s the one that suddenly--I became friends with all sorts of people, you know, scientists and counter-culture people. My life actually became like the comic. It really overlapped [laughter]. Apart from the violence--but everything else--I shaved my head to look like the character, I went to kung-fu lessons. Every time the characters were in a different location, I would travel to that location, and things would happen and feed into the book and vice versa.

Me: So what’s next? What do you have on the agenda?

Grant: A bunch of new creator stuff. I’m kind of finishing up the last few years of intensive DC Universe things, and I’ll keep doing Batman for a while, I think, because I’m enjoying that. Superman will soon be finished. I’m really pleased with that one as well, but I kind of want to get on and do my own stuff again. So I’ve got four or five projects out from Vertigo next year.

We’re getting a lot more interest in movies, as well. After the We3 screenplay which I wrote. Suddenly, I’m getting lots of offers from everywhere [laughter]. All this kind of interest.

Me: Are they looking to adapt something, or are they looking for original projects?

Grant: No, basically, they liked We3. Everyone really liked the We3 screenplay, which was good news for me. People have just been coming to me with all kinds of things: Sherlock Holmes and all kinds of projects.

About Me

Timothy Callahan is an educator and a writer. He has written books, like Grant Morrison: The Early Years, and edited books like Teenagers from the Future. He used to co-host the weekly Splash Page podcast, but now he mostly spends his free time writing for Comic Book Resources, Tor.com, Comics Alliance, and Back Issue magazine. He also plays a lot of role-playing games.